Adjective

Derived terms

Falling is movement due to gravity, but also has other uses
not directly related to gravity.

Sensation

further Sense of
balance A sensation of
falling occurs when the labyrinth
or vestibular apparatus, a system of fluid-filled passages in the
inner ear, detects motion.
The same system also detects rotary motion. A similar sensation of
falling can be induced when the eyes detect rapid apparent motion
with respect to the environment. This system enables us to keep our
balance by signalling when a physical correction is
necessary.

When a human is in free fall in an
orbiting spacecraft, or in an aircraft in a steep dive, the
sensation of falling is constant, and the sensation of there being
an "up" and a "down" is missing or much attenuated. Some medical
conditions, known as balance
disorders, also induce the sensation of falling.

Accidents

Falling is a major cause of personal
injury, especially for the elderly whose
vision, nerve conduction and muscles are weaker, whose vestibular
sense is diminished, whose neurological responses are extended, and
whose bones have grown brittle. Builders and
miners represent worker
categories representing high rates of fall injuries. The WHO estimate (2002)
that 392,000 people die in falls every year. In 1972, Vesna
Vulović survived a fall from 33,000ft without a
parachute.

Falls in the workplace

Falls from elevation hazards are
present at most every jobsite, and many workers are exposed to
these hazards daily. As such, falls are an important topic for
occupational safety and health services. Any walking/working
surface could be a potential fall hazard. An unprotected side or
edge which is 6 feet or more above a lower level should be
protected from falling by the use of a guardrail system, safety net
system, or personal fall arrest
system. These hazardous exposures exist in many forms, and can be
as seemingly innocuous as changing a light bulb from a step ladder
to something as high-risk as connecting bolts on high steel at 200
feet in the air. Falls are the second leading cause of work-related
death in the U.S. In 2000, 717 workers died of injuries caused by
falls from ladders, scaffolds, buildings, or other
elevations.

Elderly

Stephen Lord at the University of New South Wales
studied 80,000 elderly persons in Australia and found that the risk
of falling increases for any who are taking multiple prescription
medications and for all who are taking psychoactive drugs. This
increased risk was demonstrated through the use of a variety of
balance and reaction time tests. Inexplicably, the older men when
matched with women of identical height, weight, and age, on
average, performed measurably better in all of the balance and
reaction time tests.

Classical physics

further Gravity Falling is
descent under gravity.
All objects have mass and
in the presence of sufficiently massive objects such as planets or moons
they experience a strong attraction due to gravity. This is known
as weight. If the force
of gravity is not equalized by an opposite force directed away from
the planet, the object will start to fall towards the center of
mass of the system--in effect, towards the center of the
planet. The acceleration of gravity is directly
proportional to the mass of the planet. The planet will also
fall towards the center of the system but, if the object is much
less massive than the planet, this motion is imperceptible.

The way in which an object moves under gravity
(not necessarily a descent), in the absence of other forces, is
known as free fall, and
is described by a conic
section whose parameters are dependent on the object's initial
velocity. If the speed is above the escape
velocity, and the object has no downward vertical component,
the force of gravity is not enough to reverse the motion away from
the planet and it will continue indefinitely on its path away from
the planet. Otherwise it will fall back towards the planet and may
go into orbit around it or
collide with it.

In the presence of an atmosphere,
the conditions for free fall are broken and the object will
experience atmospheric
drag, and the speed at which it falls towards the planet is
subject to a terminal
velocity when the force due to drag equalizes the force of
gravity. Note that in common usage the term free fall does not take
account of atmospheric drag. Claire and Adrienne the act of being
amazing

Mathematics

In mathematics, the word
falling describes a scalar
value that decreases with respect to time or another variable.